Reset Partisanship and Anger.....

Lots of anger out there. In the past days, I have received missives from four good friends of different ages, backgrounds, experience and communities (although all US citizens). They are all liberal Democrats and early Obama supporters, and all four of them sent angry, even furious diatribes against right-wing politicians, commentators, and George W. Bush.

Even the always cool Barack Obama is angry.

Less surprisingly, there is anger on the right as well, labeling Obama as "socialist". Yahoo has been documenting it. And the New York Times had a front page story Monday on Glen Beck, the new post-Lou Dobbs mouthpiece of angry conservative populism.

Nearly everyone's in a bad mood. You, too? I am especially curious about anger from the left because I would have thought that my liberal friends still would be euphoric over Obama's victory and exulting in his commitment to press forward on an ambitious domestic agenda on education, energy, and health care, even in the face of the current economic turmoil. My guess is that their anger is the tip of some iceberg and I wonder what is under the surface.

I have two theories The first was triggered by a conversation with my wife, Lynn Staley, and an e-mail from my friend Z.from Toronto. Perhaps my correspondents are disappointed in Obama, because he has not lived up to all the expectations they put on him. They cannot acknowledge that he is human after all, and they will not criticize him for fear that they will further undermine his popular support. So they have focused their frustration on the old familiar targets: Rush Limbaugh, W, Dick Cheney, and their fellow travelers.

But it was inevitable that Obama would let people down. They put him on the pedestal with many mutually exclusive expectations. They assumed naively that the Congress would stop being representative and would fall in line.

This explanation fits well with my favorite definition of leadership: leadership is about disappointing your own people at a rate they can absorb. See, for example, Obama on Afghanistan, as a specific case in point.

A second and related idea is that people are anxious and worried about their own futures, their shrinking retirement accounts, their job loss, their depleted available cash supply, and the general uncertainty that we all face, and have focused their anxiety on those same old and easy targets.

Of course, those on the right have the same personal worries, but they have an easier target in Obama and his Administration, and then there's the Congress, the historical target of choice for anyone, any time.

There is nothing wrong with anger. It is a normal human emotion. Question, of course, is what to do with it. Sudhir Venkatesh's provocative op-ed in the Sunday New York Times News of the Week in Review suggested that the the populist rage has not been more focused, constructively or destructively, because we angry people are also embarrassed about our contributions to the mess, our years of overextending our debt and consumption.

So what would constructive harnessing of our anger look like? On the left, it is about supporting Obama, realizing that he is only human, that he is trying lots of experiments and that he and Geithner are only guessing, and then hoping that he will have the courage to keep trying different approaches until he gets it right. Be patient. Give him time. Forget wanting to be able to say "I told you so," a la Paul Krugman as seen on ABC's Sunday news program. With friends like Krugman in an economy that depends for its recovery on a psychological confidence, who needs enemies?

For Republicans, it is about creating and pushing alternatives, and holding Obama's feet to the fire, not calling him names and, worst of all, not hoping he fails. For a look at what that might mean substantively, read Carlos Watson's clever take-off on the AIG resignation letter published on the Huffington Post imagining Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's resignation letter to the Republican Party or Hendrik Hertzberg's essay advocating temporarily suspending payroll taxes (a tax cut!) in a recent Talk of the Town piece in the New Yorker.

Look, I love politics. I am a junkie. But this is no time for politics as we know it. We are in a moment of fundamental change and opportunity. Take that anger and that anxiety and channel it into activity that will help change yourself and change the world.

My Piece of the Mess, Part II

I do want to be a good citizen.

I am old enough to remember JFK's challenge to "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." While I think "country" is a rather arbitrary boundary - think family, neighborhood, community, or world - I take what he said seriously. I remember thinking about what he said when, about a year later, I signed up to register voters in the South during a summer while I was in Law School only to be called in by the Dean (the only time I talked with him in my three years there) and told not to go because it would hurt my future career. Impressionable and immature as I was, I am embarrassed to say, I took his advice.

I try to do the little things that make me feel like a contributor and not just a bloodsucking taker. We donate an appropriate tithe to charity. I buy those funny-looking energy-saving bulbs. I donate time on a couple of non-profit Boards. I fill up the sink when shaving, rather than let the water keep running. I run around turning off lights. I usually tip generously. Occasionally, but only occasionally, I even do pro bono what I otherwise get paid to do.

But now it is different. What is a good citizen to do in these times? Do I save money in a bank so that they can - but probably won't - make more loans? Do I go out and spend so those restaurants and retailers can make it through and my dollars help fuel the recovery? Do I volunteer time helping those much worse off than me? Do I write my Congressperson asking for a raise in taxes that I can probably afford? Do I give back my Social Security check to reduce the national debt or help keep the Social Security system solvent? Do I fly only on US airlines? The economists, even the micro-economists who should know about this stuff, seem without good guidance or at least a clear consensus.

If I had really big cohones, I would take a chunk of our accessible cash and buy some more stock. That might help the confidence index and the Dow and, in the end, if I live long enough, enable me to do well as well as do good. But that's a big "if".

Most everyone I know, however deeply they have been affected by the economic meltdown, have responded best as they can by hunkering down, trying to cut back expenses, save what they can if they can (not putting dollar bills under the pillow, but getting close to that), and hoping that it will all blow over.

I'm really confused. What would have us JFK do? What are you doing?